The weekend saw a turn about in fortunes for trout anglers on Lough Derg. There were some fine trout taken on dry flys by anglers blind drifting and covering  feeding fish. While much of what was landed on the Saturday fell to greenfly, spent gnat accounted for a good proportion of fish on the Sunday. Some boats found that sedges were also working well with one boat out of Fishermans Paradise in Scarriff taking 3 fish over 3lb on sedge on Saturday morning and another 7 fish on the drift between 5pm and 6pm on Sunday evening.

Gavin Mannix
Gavin Mannix, Enniskillen, is a regular visitor to Lough Derg. He had three fish but missed many, many more... (many, many, many more by all accounts!)

Many of the fish caught in the Scarriff Bay area were taken to the Mountshannon Hotel where local club members weighed, measured and sampled the fish for an ongoing genetic study of the trout in Lough Derg.

Processing the catch after a good day on the lake
Processing the catch after a good day on the lake. The biggest fish here weighed 2.2kg and was caught by Keith Perry

Padraig Giblin
Giblins Angling Services
Address: Fishermans Paradise, Scarrif, Co. Clare.
Tel: +353 (0)67 921851Mob: +353 (0)87 2580329
Email: [email protected] Web: www.fishermens-paradise.com

Paddy Dunworth of celticangling.com tells us that Tom Long, Patrickswell, Co. Limerick was on Lough Derg on the evening of the 9th of May with good friend, Darren Gardiner. They had great fishing on dry fly and managed a great bag of fish.

trout derg
A fine catch on the evening of May 9th on Lough Derg including a six and a half pounder on the dry fly by Darren Gardiner.

Dapping in the pools of memory

Dapping on Lough Derg,  – Nenagh Guardian 1962… If you’d like to be one of the lucky ones and to know first hand the pleasures of fishing quite spots beyond the range of weekend crowds, Mountshannon provides just the answer. The big attraction is the dapping which this year  surpassed any experienced in this habitat of the May-fly exponent for many years.

The fact that the spacious hotel there, that accommodated the vast influx of dappers in the years gone by, has for some time been converted into a private  nursing home, in no way daunted  residents of this picturesque village, whose private  dwellings and business premises answered the call, when an occasion such as the dapping arose.

Enquiries at several of these premises during the past week elicited the joyful news that both dapping and business soared to heights reminiscent of the good old days. Miss T. Lynch (an experienced dapper) whose guests include a Mr Holt and a party from Nottingham, informed me that the dap this year was really wonderful and attributes the angling rejuvenation to its confirming more with the old days, when dapping usually opened in or about May 10th. Her guests had 40 trout caught up to Wednesday, in less than a week’s fishing.  Some days were unfishable due to rough weather, but returns on  other days  generally averaged 6 to 14 trout. Apart from a number of big trout the average weight  was from 1 ½  to 3 lbs.

Jack Woods’ catch of 12 trout in one drift subscribes in no uncertain way to the opinion generally expressed that the dap this season is definitely  reminiscent of the old days.
Courtesy of Peter Gleeson, Nenagh Guardian